Which type of questionnaire is more likely to be returned,

with pictures or without them?

By Iona Adams

Who am I?My name is Iona Adams and I am really interested in whether pictures affect children's enthusiasm towards answering questionnaires.

Why did I choose to research this topic?Well, my research question was originally ‘Which type of questionnaire is more likely to be returned, with pictures or without them?’ But it didn’t quite go to plan!

My hypothesis I predicted that the questionnaires that had pictures in them would be returned first. I thought this would be the case because I personally would be more motivated to fill out a questionnaire if it looked nice and appealing. But was I right?

My method

I asked two classes in school years 7 or 8 to fill in either a black and white questionnaire or one with pictures. They were asked to return them to a wallet in the reception area of my school.

Here is my black and white questionnaire As you can see, this looks very boring…

This is my coloured

questionnaireThis looks a lot more pleasing to the eye, this is why I thought that more of these would be returned.

Number of questionnaires given out and returned voluntarily

As you can see, no-one returned the questionnaires voluntarily. I was a bit surprised about this, and I was honestly having a meltdown!

Plan B

I then gave out the same questionnaires to another class of students and collected them immediately.

I then analysed the answers to the questions to see if I could find out why the earlier ones weren't returned.

Number of questionnaires returned involuntarily but filled in properly

Number given out

Number filled out properly

0 5 10 15 20 25

Number of questionnaires

Luckily, there were a considerable amount of questionnaires that got filled out properly.

An immediate issue

What happened to the other eight questionnaires? Blank spaces leftQuestion marksDefaced e.g. Bob was ‘ere Are questionnaires just boring for some people?

How many of you here have ever filled in a questionnaire?

How many of you found it really tedious?

Now who thinks that it wouldn’t have been so tedious if they

had pictures and colour?

My Analysis The following slides are all examples of the questions I analysed…

Q2: What is your opinion on questionnaires?

As you can see, most people said that they didn’t like questionnaires and that they are boring.

Don’t like Boring

Q3: Have you ever answered a questionnaire before?

Here, most people said that, ‘Yes’, they had filled in a questionnaire before, but a couple said ‘No’, 1 left it blank and 1 was defaced.

My conclusionTo conclude, questionnaires have to have a purpose

which is quickly understood by the respondent and that given a choice people won’t return questionnaires voluntarily, so does it matter whether they are black and white or coloured?

Bearing in mind that I only experimented on children aged 11, 12 and 13, this may have altered the results.

11

12

13

I asked you earlier who had filled in a questionnaire before.For those of you who have

completed a questionnaire in the past year how many of you

completed it online?

Future aims

Technology has a large part to play in surveying opinions, for example at Lincroft we use Survey Monkey with students for such things as PE and iPad surveys.

I would like to research whether coloured online surveys give more accurate results than black and white online surveys.

Thank you for watching!

Does anyone have any questions?